An email from Stephanie West Allen started me thinking.  She wondered why happiness was suddenly all the rage.  Next weekend, there will be the First Annual (can there be a first annual?) Global Happiness Summit, which struck Steph as “a bit odd.” 

Odd enough that Bruce Carton tried to entice Three Angry Lawyers to attend by offering to pay their admission.  If Carton had only offered airfare and a decent hotel suite, he might have had some takers, even though the promise of the Summit was a bit, oh, vague.

The Global Happiness Summit will be the most important and dynamic summit in the history of the happiness movement, bringing together hundreds of industry, government and visionary leaders, research scientists and accomplished students from all over the world.

Apparently, the need for happiness has displaced issues like Global Warming to the extent of diverting the attention of such deep thinkers as Amy Coget, Ph.D., seen here preparing for class.

Then there’s the report in the Harvard Gazette of former President Derek Bok and his wife, Harvard Fellow, Sissela Bok, of their studies into happiness.

The couple is well-schooled in the topic. Derek Bok recently penned “The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn From the New Research on Well-Being,” while his wife Sissela is the author of “Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science.”

In relating happiness to the academic realm, Derek Bok said less attention should be placed on the drive to develop a competitive workforce, and more should be geared toward creating a better-rounded education.

Developing “ skills in the workplace comes at the expense of things that make people happier, like art and music and civic engagement … exercise, sports, and athletic pursuits,” said Bok.

Why is all this brain power going into the subject of how to achieve happiness?   The only answer I could come up with is that people must feel particularly miserable lately, giving rise to this cottage industry in happiness.  

Sure, times are tough.  But they’ve been tough before.  All it took was a cute slogan (“when the going gets tough, the tough get going”) and maybe a decent song and dance movie to snap us out of it.  Then there was anti-depressants, mood elevators, to help.  Now there’s a Global Summit.  With balloons.  And no less a scholar than Derek Bok informing us that we need to develop skills to make us happier, because work is a downer. 

You might think I’m about to launch into a rant about the value of hard work, but you would be wrong.  Bok is absolutely right, though I can’t believe he wasted time studying the issue to arrive at his conclusion.  I could have told him that.

I’ve got a laundry list of things that make me happy.  It’s no mystery.  I’m very big on community service and charitable works, and I truly enjoy helping others.  Then there are my interests in both art and music, not to mention antiques.  Exercise, not so much, but that’s just me.

As this trend toward achieving happiness is gaining momentum, and since I like happiness as much as the next guy, I’ve been giving a great deal of thought as to how we, as a society, and I, as a member thereof, can help to further the agenda.  My plan is simple.  Rather than wake up tomorrow morning and resume the drudgery that comes with working for a living, perhaps I will gaze upon an Old Master while humming a cheery tune.  When the mood strikes, I will go out and find someone needy and offer them my best wishes for their finding happiness. 

But, it seems to me that their happiness will revolve around having something to eat.  That means someone has to grow or raise some food.  Someone else has to slaughter it, and another person has to move it closer to where my hungry new friend is situated. Then it has to be packaged, moved again, and cooked.  It would then fall to me to buy it and hand it to my buddy so that he can chew at will.  Ah, then I’ll achieve happiness.

All the people along the supply chain, however, might not be nearly as happy as I am.  The farmer might want to sleep late.  The trucker might want to be home with his family.  The cook, well, might not feel like cooking.  And I might not have the money to buy my new friend food if I don’t work.

There’s a disturbance in the force.

Upon further reflection, my scheme for happiness has some holes in it.  It would, without a doubt, be just wonderful if we could limit ourselves to doing the things that make us happy.  Maybe even do some things that don’t, if only to support our happiness.  Except that there’s much to be done just to put a morsel in my hungry friend’s mouth.  The crops won’t wait until the farmer feels like doing the extremely difficult, unpleasant and time consuming work of farming.  The rancher’s herd gets hungry, just like our children, and won’t wait until he’s done being happy to feed them, just like our children. 

Happiness comes with a price.  It requires work to make it possible, since all the components that go into our happy lives have to be performed by someone, and that means one person’s happiness comes at the expense of another’s.  But even our happiness isn’t free.  Other than Maynard G. Krebs, few among us are able to indulge our happiness without having to fund it or fuel it.  No one is handing it to us with a broad smile, saying “enjoy!” and walking away.

Yet this belief that we can enjoy happiness without enduring the misery has become the trend.  It’s everywhere, a pervasive notion that life offers us a free ride if only we knew how to hop on board.  Carrying around a bunch of smiley face balloons isn’t going to cut it.  Closing your ears to harsh words and pretending everybody loves you doesn’t fool anyone.  And it’s still a tough world out there.  Just ask your kids, who have come to the realization that they will be paying for your medical care until their death absolves them from debt.

I had a talk with my kid the other day, who was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the full-frontal attack of responsibility as he stared budding adulthood in the eye.  “I’m not happy,” he told me.  He wanted to be three years old again, where his every need was taken care of and his happiness was the focus of all around him.  “Sorry, kiddo,” I explained, “but there’s no going back.”  One way or another, life catches up with all of us.”

Wearing my best Ward Cleaver smile, I explained that if he gave some hard thought to the things that mattered to him now, and put in the effort to position himself so that he could spend his days doing things that mattered, he would feel a sense of satisfaction with himself.  It wasn’t all happy, as in a day of uninterrupted videogames, but it would provide both a sense of accomplishment, which brings happiness, as well as a certain assurance of comfort, also a happiness factor.  Still, it was going to take some hard work to be happy.

I won’t be taking up Bruce Carton’s very kind offer of paying my admission to the First Annual Global Happiness Summit.  I don’t need it, and don’t think I will really like what they have to say.  More importantly, I’m pretty darn happy already.  I just don’t feel the need to broadcast it and make all those other people feel even more miserable about themselves.  My guess is that if you feel the need to go to the Summit, you’re never going to be happy no matter what.